Wonderful version of a classic tune…

Over at SI.com Cliff takes a look at second-half X-factors who could decide playoff chases. First up, that man Joba:

On Tuesday night, Mariano Rivera announced that he’s going to skip the All-Star Game due to some minor injuries. Rivera has been pitching through the pain and doesn’t expect to go on the disabled list, but he’s unable to pitch more than one inning per appearance, and Yankee manager Joe Girardi has to be extra careful with the 40-year-old’s workload. That means Chamberlain, whose frustrating inconsistency has followed him back to the bullpen, will not only have to get out of his own jams, but could be called upon to close at points in the second half (he has already picked up two saves in the first half). While Rivera has been his usual dominant self thus far, the rest of the Yankee pen has been struggling, hurt, or both (see: Park, Chan Ho) for much of the season. Chamberlain dominated out of the pen before the Yankees moved him into the rotation in mid 2008 (1.32 ERA, 12.1 K/9 in 47 2/3 IP). In an AL East race in which the three best teams in baseball are separated by just three games and at least one will miss the playoffs entirely, Chamberlain needs to find that old consistency and fast to help ensure that the reigning world champions will be back in the playoffs to defend their title.

I was cruisin’ around Saveur’s website and saw this:

From a most delicious blog called Joy the Baker.

Check, check it out.

Can someone, anyone, give me just one good reason why LeBron James would choose to come to the Knicks rather than Miami, Chicago or Cleveland.

Just looking for one good reason as we wait for the ESPN stroke-a-thon tonight at 9.

There is an air of playful desperation about Nick Swisher’s campaign to be an All-Star. I don’t know that he deserves it over Paul Konerko or Kevin Youkilis but if Swisher doesn’t get in it sure won’t be for a lack of trying. And if he does make it, man, I assumed he’ll be teased by his fellow All-Stars (not to mention his teammates) to no end. Swisher comes across like a goofball without guile, at least I think his Polly Positive schtick is not an act. Which is probably why he can pull it off. My wife loves him for it; me, I’m not so sure. I’m not as hard on him as I was last year, but I’m still cautious.  But so long as he keeps playing like he’s done for the first half of the season, you won’t hear me bitchin’.

Swisher had three hits last night, including a home run and double, Mark Teixeira also homered and AJ Burnett pitched well for his third straight game as the Yanks completed a nifty, three-game sweep of the Oakland A’s.

Final Score: Yanks 6, A’s 2.

Man, you don’t see that often. The Yanks sweeping on the West Coast. They head off to Seattle in what’ll be their last west coast stop of the year. Cliff Lee and Felix Hernandez wait but the Yanks are playing well. Here’s hoping they end the first half with no less than a series split.

We’ll take a re-run of AJ Burnett’s last performance, now won’t we?

Let’s hope the wild man evens his record at 7-7 and the Yanks leave the Bay Area feelin’ fine.

And yo, speaking of the Bay…

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

According to a report filed by Andrew Marchand, Robbie Cano will not be part of the Ding Dong Derby, after all.

[Photo Credit: 3:10 to Joba]

Let’s stick with Mr. Hopper…

Cape Cod Afternoon (1936)

One of my favorites from Uncle Louis:

It reached 103 degrees in New York yesterday. It’s supposed to hit 98 today.

Man, it’s too hot to think about food. I just wish I was near a pool so’s I could do the Nestea Plunge:

Hot news for us Buster Keaton fans.

According to David Kehr in the New York Times:

A new, double-disc edition (also available as a single Blu-ray disc) of Keaton’s 1928 “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” presents both the familiar, public domain print that has been a staple of film societies and television screenings for decades, and an alternate version, newly discovered in the Keaton estate archive, that uses different takes or different angles for many shots and is cleaner and sharper than the standard print. (It was common in the silent era to produce two different negatives, one for domestic and one for export use; in this case, it isn’t clear which is which.)

…After “The General” (1926) and “College” (1927), “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” was Keaton’s third costly failure in a row, and would prove to be the last film he would make for his own independent production company. Audiences had turned their back on him (In The New York Times the reviewer Mordaunt Hall described “Steamboat Bill” as “a sorry affair”), just as Keaton had turned his back on them, quite literally, at times, given his penchant for shooting himself from behind. Keaton invited neither the audience’s identification, as Lloyd did, nor its sympathy, as Chaplin did. He presented a closed-off, self-sufficient figure, his emotions, if any, hidden behind his famous stone face.

Here is the most famous shot from the movie (no such thing a tough guy actor these days when you see this):

I can’t wait to get this new DVD…

Couple few news items worth noting…

Mariano Rivera is banged-up. He has a sore right knee. His left rib cage is aching too, so Rivera will not appear in the All-Star Game next week. Joe Girardi is downplaying the injuries but at 40-years-old, Rivera’s health is of concern.

I’ve daydream occasionally, wondering how Rivera’s career will end. The daydreams are always tidy–the Yanks win another Serious and Rivera walks away on top. Reality usually doesn’t comply with these kinds of fantasies but still, it shouldn’t stop us from dreaming. Anyhow, I could easily see this being Rivera’s swan swong, or I could see him returning for another season or two. One thing I’m hyper-aware of–and have been since, oh, about November, 2001–is that it’s not going to last, that life as a Yankee fan will soon be different, that it is important to appreciate every time Rivera is out on the mound, no matter the result.

* * * *

Robbie Cano is going to participate in the Home Run Derby come Monday. My first thought, without causing undo embarrassment, I hope he goes out in the first round. Then I read this from the Yankees’ hitting coach, Kevin Long:

“I would prefer he’s not involved in it, but that’s not my decision,” Kevin Long said. “History suggests that guys that do the home run hitting contest get fatigued and exhausted from the process. I’m happy for the fact that he’s maybe getting the opportunity, but in the same breath we have to be careful in how he goes about this.”

…”I think it’s a lot of swings for a player; physically, I think it’s somewhat of a grind, but it’s an honor to be involved,” Girardi said. “The biggest thing is that we keep Robinson Cano healthy and strong the whole year. If that in any way would fatigue him, then I would prefer that he didn’t get fatigued.”
(Feinsand, N.Y. Daily News)

(more…)

I was thinking about the two impressive starting pitchers being featured tonight in Oakland, but this being Oakland, up popped the image of the Tooz:

Good ol’, Oakland.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

Since July 4th was Louis Armstrong’s birthday (and even if it wasn’t his official birthday, play along), let’s dedicate the rest of the week’s beats to him. Here’s one of Woody’s favorites:

I’m writing to you today from the afterlife, but please do not be alarmed. I am asking for your kindest assistance in a noble venture. It is completely on the up-and-up, and my minions are beyond questioning regarding their decency and motives. They have taken my good name and ascribed it to a cancer research foundation.  Not only have they done that, but they’ve endeavored to undertake a fundraising walkathon in that hallowed house of our National Pastime, Yankee Stadium.

Yes, on the same field that the smoothly dashing Derek Jeter and genial yet lethal Mariano Rivera ply their trade, many feet will trod on August 15th.  They will saunter and/or gallop through the corridors of the seating areas, and end their 5K jaunt on the warning track of the Stadium.  And you, dear reader, can join in this aerobic activity.

What’s that you say?  You can’t make the event?  Your “ambulatoryness” lost its “ness”?  You can’t afford the entry fee?  Well, I am sad to hear of that, and I can’t help but think of the opportunity you are missing, but let me offer you yet another way to help my enterprise.

Unbeknownst to you readers still of this mortal coil, they do have the Internet in Heaven (I hear they have it in Hell too, but there its dial-up).  One of my favorite sites for sportswriting is the portal through which I am communicating right now, Bronx Banter.  It just so happens that Diane Firstman, an erudite Banter columnist and long-legged lass, who can probably circle the bases in a mere 64 paces or so, is already registered for the event, and is looking for supporters.

Being of the feminine persuasion, and therefore lack some of the proper, how should we say, “equipment” to play this wondrous game of baseball, this may be the only way dear Diane will ever make it onto the dirt at Yankee Stadium (unless she tumbles out of the stands in a futile attempt to corral an $8.00 foul ball, but of course that would require a seat in those “Legends” sections, which would seem to imply that the sittee could BUY hundreds of those same $8.00 baseballs and not risk getting tossed out of the Stadium by that delightful Yankee Stadium gestapo, but I digress).  It would touch my weary soul if you would pledge a few dollars towards her participation in this event.

If you’ve read this far, I thank you.  If you’ve decided to participate by joining this walkathon/run, I thank you.  If you’ve decided to participate by supporting Ms. Firstman, I thank you.  If you HAVEN’T read this far, then there must be some alternate reality existing within this portal, and I suggest you log off and go outside and throw a ball around.

Sincerely, Damon Runyon’s ethereal presence . . .

Man, an ice-cold, air-conditioned movie theater sounds like the place to be today as the temperature hits 100 in the Big Apple.

From There’s No Business Like Show Business:

How do you follow that? Well, never one to be upstaged…

Yo, where you at?

[Photo Credit: Mamrie’s Weblog]

Jeremiah Moss, who runs the most excellent blog, Vanishing New York, has a piece in the Times about the location of Edward Hopper’s famous painting, “Nighthawks.”  Moss dug through archival photographs and microfilm to pinpoint the exact spot only to discover that the scene Hopper painted didn’t entirely exist in the first place:

Back home, I dug through my bookshelves and unearthed Gail Levin’s “Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography.” The book is autographed by the author — I had gone to hear Ms. Levin read in a bookshop that is now gone — and dated from a time when I was still new to the city and knew it largely, romantically, as a sprawling Hopper painting filled with golden, melancholy light. In the book, Ms. Levin reported that an interviewer wrote that the diner was “based partly on an all-night coffee stand Hopper saw on Greenwich Avenue … ‘only more so,’” and that Hopper himself said: “I simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger. Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.”

Partly. More so. Simplified. The hidden truth became clearer. The diner began to fade. And then I saw it — on every triangular corner, in the candy shop’s cornice and the newsstand’s advertisement for 5-cent cigars, in the bakery’s curved window and the liquor store’s ghostly wedge, in the dark bricks that loom in the background of every Village street.

Over the past years, I’ve watched bakeries, luncheonettes, cobbler shops and much more come tumbling down at an alarming rate, making space for condos and office towers. Now the discovery that the “Nighthawks” diner never existed, except as a collage inside Hopper’s imagination, feels like yet another terrible demolition, though no bricks have fallen.

I’ve come to appreciate Moss’ blog–it’s a regular stop for me–but I don’t share his disappointment here because I think an artist’s natural inclination is to combine his (or her) imagination with what they see in real life. Once it becomes a picture, on the canvas, it has its own rules, and isn’t meant to be a document like a photograph. And this picture gets at one of Hopper’s most compelling (and enduring) themes–“the lonliness of the big city.”

 When I look at the painting, actually, my eye always goes across the street to the empty store front on the left-hand side of the canvas, the triangle-shape of green in the middle window above that store. I love how it gives balance to the scene inside the diner. It is an empty space but sturdy and sure.

What I don’t know from professional hoops is more than somewhat. Still, as a casual fan, I just don’t see the Knicks’ splashy signing of Amare Stoudemire as anything but a prelude to more disappointment at the Garden. Maybe I’m jaded by all these years of Dolan depression. Amare strikes me as the guy you’d ideally want to be the third-best player on your team, not the guy you build around. He is a stud, he is a good player but he also feels like Plan B.

I’m curious to know just how much better he is than David Lee (he’s better for sure, don’t get me wrong). Anyhow, unless he lures a couple of more stars to town–preferably a point guard–this could be the start of something familiar. To be fair, it is too soon to judge this signing. I just hope it is the start of something…better, for the Knicks and their fans, and not just another re-run. It’s still early…

Am I crazy? Am I mising something?

The Yankees make their final west coast trip of the season, and we’re not even at the All-Star Break yet. Go figure that.

Sox and Rays are playing tonight, so have at it if you’re just kickin’ around before the late night game in Oakland.

We Keep the Light On…

[Picture by Bags]